Stoughton Historical Society Newsletter Online Edition
VOLUME XLVII NO. 3 JAN-FEB-MAR 2018
Upcoming Events
February 11 2:00 P. M. – The Blizzard of 1978 – February 4, 2018 is the 40th Anniversary of this historic event. Come and see images from our files and bring your own, as we share our adventures and misadventures. If you email us your own digital images, we will make some of them part of the program.
March 11 2:00 P. M. – Helen Keller: Champion of the Disabled -Historical re-enactor Sheryl Faye, who recently presented Eleanor Roosevelt for us, will share a moving version of the life of Helen Keller.
April 15 2:00 P. M. – The Life and Times of Helen Hansen: One of Stoughton’s Best – Helen passed away in January of this year at age 100. It is unlikely that anyone has contributed more to the Town than this life-long educator and long-time member and supporter of the Historical Society. Read Howard Hansen’s tribute to Helen, later in this newsletter.
President’s Report
On Nov 19, we had a full house for Christopher Daley’s program on Sacco and Vanzetti. He showed many pictures of locations where important events transpired, including the site of the robbery, the Johnson garage in West Bridgewater, the courtroom in Dedham, scenes from various prisons, and marchers in the funeral procession to Forest Hills. He acknowledged that after many years of study that he had no final answers regarding their guilt or innocence.
Among the interesting information we have gathered since the program included a message from Lynne Sampson that her grandmother, an Austin who married a Raymond, knew Sacco and thought highly of him when he would visit their store across Park Street from the factory. Lynne also revealed that her grandmother kept a diary for many years and we are looking forward to discovering what she wrote about our Town during World War I and the next decade.
In December, we were visited by Harold Shurtleff, a descendant of the Shurtleff family of Plympton. Deborah Sampson knew of this family and used the name William Shurtleff when she enlisted in the army during the American Revolution. Hal, the Director of Camp Constitution in West Roxbury said that he would mail me the book on Sacco and Vanzetti, which proved (or at least emphatically concluded) that they were guilty. He mailed me four copies of Sacco and Vanzetti: The Murder and the Myth by Robert H. Montgomery, a paperback published in 1960. Almost all the evidence in the book is taken from the transcripts of the trial, which Montgomery examines meticulously. Clearly, his thesis is that both men were guilty and the mass movements to support them were centered on propaganda and agitation. I read parts of the book, focusing mostly on the chapters which related to Sacco. Montgomery makes a very compelling case when he points out the strength in the evidence that Sacco had several different kinds of bullets in his pocket, when arrested, one of them quite rare, and that the bullets taken from the guard’s body included some of the same different kinds of bullets, including the rare one. On the other hand, ONE of the bullets showed markings “proving” that it came from Sacco’s gun, but my understanding is that the other ones did not have the same markings. In other words the bullets point toward Sacco, but the markings on them raise other questions. If some of them were not fired from Sacco’s gun, what then?
In the much more recent Sacco and Vanzetti by Bruce Watson, (2007) which has been one of my main sources, Watson comments on the Momtgomery book:
“By 1960, when NBC aired a mournful Reginald Rose teleplay about the case, the widespread certainty that justice had been crucified in Massachusetts was ripe for attack. With the cold war at its height, cold warriors began to chisel away at “the myth” of Sacco and Vanzetti. Now conservatives claimed that they had to be guilty. The opening salvo of revision was Sacco and Vanzetti: The Murder and the Myth by Boston corporate lawyer Robert H. Montgomery. As if he were the reincarnation of Frederick Katzmann, Montgomery highlighted incriminating evidence and downplayed each doubt, convicting Sacco and Vanzetti of the Braintree crime and Vanzetti of the Bridgewater burglary. Both trials had been fair, both verdicts just, Montgomery wrote. Reds and radicals had exploited the case “for revolutionary purposes and propaganda, mass agitation, and the breaking down of the American judicial system and American institutions generally.” (p. 361.)
This passage is in the epilogue in which Watson concludes that although we can in no way say for sure whether Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent or guilty, we can say that by our current judicial standards, they did not receive a fair trial. He describes his visit to the birthplaces of the two men in Italy, Sacco’s in Terremaggiore and Vanzetti’s in Villafalletto. The ashes of both are now interred in their birthplaces and both towns have streets named Sacco -Vanzetti. Watson concludes the epilogue: “Aside from ashes, a haunted tragedy-shaded by doubts, shrouded by scandal and the equivocal judgment of mankind- is what remains of two anarchists, two gentlemen who lived the dream and the nightmare of Italy’s most famous exile.
The Ezekiel Price and John Rowe Revolutionary War Diaries
Former President Joe Devito had been reading Nathaniel Philbrick’s Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution and noticed references to and from the Ezekiel Price diary. Ezekiel Price was identified as living in Stoughton and Joe wondered what we had on him in our records. Ezekiel Price, a Boston lawyer and judge, lived at Doty Tavern during the time when Boston was occupied by the British, but returned to Boston after the evacuation of British. His diary, which is in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society has been quoted a few times in past newsletters. It is available online via Google Books. Here is an entry from 1775: ” Dec 13, 1775 …Capt Scot stopt here, in his way to Dighton. Says his wife and family are got out; that Mrs. Scot told him that our house (in Boston) was occupied by soldiers: so that I now suppose all left by us there is plundered and destroyed.”
On one day in warmer weather, his wife and a female friend climb the (nearby to Doty’s Tavern) Great Blue Hill and one of them kills “two snakes” on the way down. Doty’s Tavern is where the first meeting to create the Suffolk Resolves took place, which is the justification for the bumper sticker, “Stoughton: the Birthplace of American Liberty.” Canton folks would tell you that the site is now in Canton, but it was Stoughton then. The Suffolk Resolves meeting had taken place at Doty’s Tavern a year before this diary begins. The Rev Samuel Dunbar led off the meeting with a fiery patriotic prayer. On some Sundays, Price and his wife drive over to Rev. Dunbar’s church services at the site of what is now Canton Corner. We have the diary of Samuel’s son Elijah Dunbar, transcribed and available at the Historical Society along with relevant maps of early Stoughton/Canton. In it we have included a picture of the Rev. Samuel’s tombstone at the nearby cemetery. Beside it are the stones of his three wives, two of whom he outlived.
In our revisiting of the Price diary, we discovered the Revolutionary Diary of John Rowe, which covers the same period and is also in the possession of the MHS. It is also available online with a long introduction written by Edward Lillie Pierce.
Rowe was a successful Boston Merchant for whom Rowe’s Wharf was later named. He was not as much of a rebel/patriot as Price. Here is a brief excerpt from Edward L Pierce’s introduction to the Rowe diary: “…Rowe, however, while considering the conduct of the British government impolitic and harsh, was indisposed to carry opposition beyond argument, appeal, and protest; and at no time did he favor measures looking to forcible resistance and independence. His position is misconceived when he is classed with the ” Patriots,” — the party who supported separation from the mother country, and had in view the use of force outside of law to promote that end. Towards Samuel Adams and William Molineux he was not well affected, as his Diary shows. He was, however, prudent enough to keep up pleasant personal relations with both sides. He did not join the patriotic exodus from Boston when the siege began, preferring to remain in order to protect his property. (He seems, however, to have applied, April 28, 1775, for a pass to go out with his effects, which was for some reason refused.) This may have counted against him with the Patriots ; for when after the British evacuation he proposed to join in the ceremonies for the interment of Dr. Warren, a brother Mason, he encountered rude treatment from the populace, and found it prudent to withdraw. His close relations with the family of Captain John Linzee, an English navy officer, (whom his adopted daughter married) must have made him an object of suspicion. The popular feeling was, however, soothed in time by his amiable manners, the good offices he freely distributed among his townsmen, his active service on a relief committee, and his general usefulness as a citizen; so that before peace was reached, he was elected a representative to the General Court.”
One thing that makes the Rowe Diary fascinating is this introductory essay and commentary, written by Edward Lillie Pierce, who, as mentioned in the last newsletter, grew up on the other end of Highland St from me, 200 years ago. His older brother Henry ended up being a major force at the Baker Chocolate Factory and later became Mayor of Boston. Edward became a scholar, collected the letters and wrote the memoirs of Senator Charles Sumner, and gave the main address at the dedication of our Town Hall, in which he expressed his fond memories of his childhood up here in the Dry Pond section of Stoughton. It will be worth investigating what other contributions Edward Lillie Pierce made to the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Also of local relevance in the Rowe diary is the fact that he describes wonderfully productive fishing at Ponkapoag Pond near Doty’s Tavern. Rowe was a dedicated fresh-water fisherman: “John Boylston and Rowe passed the night of July 31, 1767, at the Widow Noyes’s in Sharon, after fishing in ” Mossepong Pond.” The entry of the next day: ” We went to Punkapong Pond and fished there; we caught 26 dozen of pond perch before ten of clock, which I told. We dined there; after dinner set out for Boston, and got in before dark.” After a a different night at Doty’s, Rowe, Jacobson, and Calef fished, Aug. 18, 1768, in the same pond: ” Had great sport, caught upwards of twenty-seven dozen, and some large fish ; dined at Doty’s ; after dinner set out for home, was caught in the rain, stopped at Mr. Clark’s at Milton, drank tea there.”
Work from our Volunteers and on the Lucius Clapp Memorial
Our volunteers on Thursday evenings Jason Martin and Zachary Mandosa (with apologies for getting his name incorrect in the last Newsletter) have been joined by student volunteers Jahmare White, a sophomore and Jessica Moore, a junior, both at Stoughton High School.
Jason Martin has been searching local newspapers that we have on file for references to WWI or Sacco and Vanzetti through the year 1927.) He has found many references to events taking place at Glen Echo Park, including a much-ballyhooed hot-air balloon ascension in 1913 and an article which claims that there are 175 cottages at Glen Echo! That number makes no sense to any of us who have studied the history of Glen Echo. It is remotely possible that there were 175 sites available, including a few cottages, but with most of the number being available camp sites. Jason also did research on the riveter we purchased, which was manufactured by Creative Engineering in Stoughton circa 1979.
Zachary Mandosa has completed the transcription of the diary of William A. Holmes, excerpts of which were in the last newsletter. We have located an online Holmes genealogy, which reveals that William Amos Holmes was born in Sharon on May 20, 1826 and died in Stoughton in May of 1891. In 1849, which I take to be not long after he wrote his diary, he married Jane Gibbs, who died in 1853, after which, in 1854, William married Abby Manning (Capen) Reed, the widow of John Reed who had also died in 1853. The first marriage yielded John Gibbs Holmes in 1852 and the second, Arthur Lake Holmes in1855. William was a carpenter and builder in Stoughton, where he resided nearly all of his life.
Zachary has since transcribed more than four months of the 1874 Diary of Erastus Smith. At this time Erastus’s wife Emeline had died five years earlier and their daughter Amy was now eleven years old. He describes Amy staying home from school with a toothache and a few days later administering “a sweat” because she was sick. Erastus is a jack-of-all trades, planting and harvesting a number of crops, grafting and growing apple trees, cutting wood for himself and others, digging graves at the nearby Dry Pond Cemetery, making benches, ax handles, wheelbarrows, sprinklers, stops, and music stands He has a shop and reports widely-varying numbers of people being present at it in the day and evenings. There may have also been a store. On one date he writes, “Charly opened the store for me. 8 in shop.” On another date, he writes“soddered 1300 sprinklers.” That large a number hints that possibly people work for him in the shop to help make the sprinklers. There are other references to soldering brass and to a brass foundry in Norwood, which someone suggests that he should manage. He makes one or two trips a month in to Boston, purchasing such things as tobacco, oranges, confectionary, figs, raisins, nuts, and apples. There is a woman named Maria whom he visits often. She has been ill and Erastus is very concerned for her health. By May of 1874 she appears to be recovering. Erastus’s gravestone reveals that Maria Adams became his second wife, but, alas, she died in 1876.
Jahmare White is reading the already transcribed Civil War diaries of Charles Eaton and Alfred Waldo as his introduction to some of the materials we have at the Society. Jessica Moore is reading and taking notes on a John Flynn diary beginning in November of 1950.
We are also undertaking a search for the identity of the parents of a boy born in Stoughton to a female in the Stoughton High School graduating class of 1977 in April of 1977. The child was put up for adoption within two months and the parents are not named on the adoption papers. We realize that the identity of the parents may be a delicate matter, but we have agreed to help in the search. If you can help in the identification, please let us know, and we will use the information as discreetly as possible.
All of the new storm windows are in place at our building, and the old windows have been removed to be repaired and refurbished at the shop of the contractor. The new storm windows help better insulate the building, but during the coldest nights, we experienced one frozen pipe, which fortunately we found in time and managed to thaw before any permanent damage occurred. Christmas decorations have gone up and come down. Unfortunately, the Holiday Parade of Lights had to be canceled because of a storm. The Town now takes care of the snow-shoveling after most storms, which a great help.
Archivist’s Report – For Veterans Day, Nov. 11, Joe Brian and I put up a sign on the front railing honoring all of our veterans. I swept the entry stairs inside and out including the basement and installed a soap-holder in the men’s room. Cleaned windows in front doors and put up Christmas wreaths inside and out. Prepared an order for supplies and gave to Dwight. Worked at cleaning up the Archive Room and filing stuff away. With all the window work being done, keeping the place looking good is a lost cause.
Started research on Albert St. John Chambre’ for whom the Stoughton GAR Post 72 was named. Albert St. John Chambre’ served the Universalist Church as pastor from 1864 – 1872. He joined the GAR post a few days after it was organized in 1868. It is not clear if he was one of the original organizers. However a year later when a committee was formed to choose a name. The committee’s recommendation was that it be named the “A. St. John Chambre’ GAR Post 72”. The Rev. A. St John Chambre’ was then elected to serve as the First Post Commander, a position he held until 1872 when he resigned his pastorate in Stoughton to serve a church in another community. Naming the post after him was considered a High Honor. The Rev Chambre’ had served a three year enlistment in the Eighth New Jersey Volunteers as their Chaplain. I also located a published sermon of his, and a newspaper clipping that included his picture.
Denise Peterson, has donated a copy of a hand-drawn sketch of The M & M Variety Store, by her son Edward C. Van Laarhoven at age 14 on August 7, 1979. At the time he lived across the street from the store at 49 Winter St. The store was named for its owners Mary Snow & Marge Butterall. They were sisters-in-law and ran a typical neighborhood store including beer and wine. Home-made Kielbasa was a specialty and one of the reasons for the store’s success. The store operated from the mid 1950’s to the mid 1980’s when Marge retired. The famous kielbasa was then made and sold for several years at Bob’s Famous Food Mart on Park Street by Mary Snow, until she retired.
Evelyn Callanan, donated 10 pictures formerly owned by her sister Mary DeVito. Nine of them of July 4th parades 1940 & 41 showing various floats reviewing stand etc. in Stoughton Square. One is a picture of Joseph Devito Sr. behind the counter of his store on the occasion of the store’s 50th Anniversary.
Katherine Ceruti donated the 1940 Stoughton high school yearbook of Everett Ceruti.
-Richard Fitzpatrick
Curator’s Report
Acquisitions: A riveting tool, “The Nutter,” made by Creative Engineering of Stoughton, located at 101-105 Tosca Drive circa 1979. That company seems to also have had operations in Sharon and Taunton over the years. The item was purchased on eBay; a dog tag of World War II Veteran Everett Cerutti from Katherine Ceruti. -Brian Daley
Clothing Curator’s Report – In December the Society received the World War II Army Air Corps uniforms belonging to Everett R. Ceruti., donated by Katherine Ceruti. The items include a winter Great Coat, an Eisenhower jacket, a pair of wool pants, a wool shirt and a dress hat. All of the items have a variety of patches, emblems and ribbons. Richard Fitzpatrick has helped to identify most of these items and give them their proper names and meanings. Joe De Vito has contacted the town veterans agent and we now have a copy of Mr. Ceruti’s service record. With the information in these items we can tie his uniform decorations with his service record and put a true meaning to them. This adds so much more interest to the donation other than just the value of the uniforms themselves. The help that Dick and Joe have given me is greatly appreciated. -Janet Clough
Membership
New members: Lindsay Weber, Martin West, Stephanie Carrera, Jessica Moore